


Phone

by suchasoftersin



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-31
Updated: 2012-07-31
Packaged: 2017-11-11 02:40:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/473586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suchasoftersin/pseuds/suchasoftersin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fernando teaches Sergio English over the phone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Phone

Sometimes I’m extremely happy that Sergio talked me into getting a phone plan to call nearly anywhere I wanted. I was reluctant at first because why would I possibly need to call the whole world? Certainly I didn’t know anyone in India or Norway or even Australia, so why would I need to talk to anyone there? Once I’d said it out loud, Sergio’s laugh had made my whole face burn even though I didn’t understand why. Just the thought that I’d embarrassed myself in front of him made me want to hide in a hole for the rest of my life.

“Nando,” he’d taken my warm face in his even warmer hands, “the whole world includes Spain, where I’ll be most of the time. Maybe I won’t ever be in most of the places you’ll be able to call but I will visit a lot of them. And while I’m there, I want to be able to hear your voice any time I want for as long as I want.” I agreed to it as soon as he’d smiled and my name had left his mouth, never one to tell him no.

It varied. Some were short calls just after a match, all under three minutes to give congratulations before celebrations began. Other times it was long conversations filled with spots of silence when we ran out of words to comfort for a loss. It was rare that we had completely free days (of games and practice), but we spent some of that time talking, too. He’d call me early in the morning and even though I was far from a morning person, I couldn’t stay mad at him when I heard the smile in his voice. The best phone calls were the ones late at night, when we had to whisper to keep from waking up our roommates, when the whole world was still and it felt like only we existed. Together.

Most of our time was currently spent working on his ever-improving English. He’d ask me for a sentence and I’d translate it for him, saying it slow enough that he could hear every syllable. Usually the first time he said it back to me always made me smile because it never sounded correct but I knew he was really trying. The next hour of our conversation was filled with him repeating the phrase over and over, working the kinks out until it rolled off his tongue with a masked Spanish accent. When I taught him “I love you”, he’d spend an extra hour learning it even though he’d perfected it within the first fifteen minutes (to be fair, though, I didn’t try to stop him).

By now he was full of many odds and ends in my second language, from “I will make a goal” all the way to “there is no lint in my bellybutton”. I don’t know why he’d ever need to use the second one, but I’d only laughed before I translated it when he asked.

“I want to see you.” It wasn’t so much the words themselves that surprised me but the language they were in. English. I hadn’t taught him anything like that and it made me wonder where he’d learned it because it sounded perfect when he said it. Maybe he’d picked it up from a show or a song, which I knew he sometimes listened to in English even though it was too fast for him to really understand. Knowing Sergio, though, he’d probably gone ahead and asked someone he knew could tell him how to do it without error.  


“Why?”

There was a moment of silence, hesitation, which meant he was translating before he spoke. His English was getting much better but he still struggled – the more time he had to think about his words, the better they came out when he spoke. To put it simply, he was a chatterbox in our native tongue but not so much when left to anything else. In fact, he tries to use it as little as possible because it’s out of his comfort zone. Even with all of his practice, his sentence involuntarily came out as a question even though I knew he didn’t mean it that way, “be…come you I miss?”

“Because I miss you.” I told myself that I was correcting him because I was his teacher and he’d made a mistake, not because my heart was swelling so much that it cut off the blood supply going to my head in order to think of a better response. Even if I’d had the ability to think, I probably would have said something similar – I’m no good at telling him things like that. I had barely been able to bump our hands together when we walked to let him know I wanted to hold his. The only time I would cuddle up to him was when I was sure that he was asleep, although he tricked me a few times and I knew he was awake after his arm tightened around me when I moved closer. I was lucky, though, because most of the time Sergio knew what I was thinking even when I didn’t know sometimes. He never asked me to say things that I was uncomfortable with and he didn’t make me do things I was afraid of.

Sergio had always been the one to voice things openly – his love, his happiness, his wants, his dreams. I wasn’t exactly as free as he was, my shyness got in the way of how much I talked about the things I thought about or felt. Sometimes my tongue would slip up, though, when we were burrowed under sheets with naked bodies pressed together beneath them. Right after the words would leave my mouth, his grin made me try not to advert my gaze no matter how nervous I felt from saying it. My whole stomach flipped and I felt like I could barely find enough air for my lungs. He always repeated it back to me.

“I love you.”

I don’t know where it came from and I don’t know why, but it did. Three words. As soon as they were out in the open, I felt like my whole face was in flames and my throat was filled with the smoke from the fire. I wanted to take it back, to tell him that I hadn’t meant it, but we both knew that was a lie if I ever did tell one. I wanted to hang up the phone and avoid it, pretend I lost service, but a bigger part of me wanted to see what he was going to say. I knew what he was going to say.

“I love you, Nando.” He breathed and I could hear the smile in his voice. The same smile, that if I were there, would have been pressed against my hair, my neck, my cheek, my lips. Just the thought made me want. Want his arms around me while we were spread out in his bed but pressed too close together to be considered as separate people. Want his smile, his laugh, his gaze and his embrace. I want his body next to mine again, his never-ending heat warming me in the cool English weather. Him. I just want him.

“Was that a yes?” He knew the answer before he even asked.

“…yes.” I hesitated, not because it’s not what I wanted but because I didn’t know how it was going to be possible. We were both in training with no way to weasel out of it, as the season was starting to pick up for both of us. For surprisingly not the first time, I wished that this relationship were much easier (or at least the circumstances that came with it) so that my stomach wouldn’t have to drop like this. I never went as far as wishing I’d never left Spain because even if I’m still a native of the country, I love Liverpool. Wishing Sergio wasn’t in Spain is like wishing the sun out of the sky – it is where it belongs. So I don’t want it to be much different, just easier.

“I’ll be there tomorrow. I already booked the earliest flight so that we have as much time as possible.” There really wasn’t any other way to say to say it: Sergio is what can only be described as a sun baby. If the sun is up, so is he. I often wondered if it was because he was born on a particularly sunny day or if a love for the light grew on him when he was young. Whatever it was, he was a child of the sun through and through, all the way down to his personality.

“Tomorrow?” I asked while I craned my neck to glance over at the clock beside the hotel bed. 11:39. We’d been on the phone since 7 and now he’s telling me that he’s going to get on a plane in a few hours to fly all the way here for a visit. How could he make that kind of deadline?

“Well I had a feeling that you would agree to it.” His lips would be curled up into a smile, maybe a light smirk. “Well, I hoped so.” Now they would be pouted out, showing how full his lips are, something he does when he pauses when talking. Whenever he did it, I’d have to resist the urge to kiss it away, no matter where we were or who was around. Sometimes I lost. “I should go to bed, Nando. Gotta be up early. Important things to do.”

“Oh?” I teased, “what could be so important?”

He didn’t skip a beat, “gotta catch a plane to visit a beautiful Scouser.”

“Awe Sese! You didn’t tell me you liked Stevie.” My tone was overdramatic, joking, something that most people didn’t get to hear with me. I knew that he’d be rolling his eyes on the other side of the phone, the other side of the world, in Spain. “Maybe if you’re nice, I’ll see if I can get you a date. He’s pretty picky, though, so no promises.”

“Good. And while you’re at it, tell him I’m taken by the most beautiful boy in the world.” I probably could have come up with a good comeback to keep the game going but I suddenly didn’t feel like pretending his words didn’t get to me. So instead of answering, all I could do was smile and breathe into the receiver. “I’ll see you soon, Nando. I love you.”

I made a small noise, a habit I’d yet to tame. “Sweet dreams.”

”Always of you,” he chuckled before there was a distinct sound of his lips smacking in a kiss. By the time I started to laugh, my phone lit up to tell me that he’d hung up already. Instead of bothering to move my phone to the nightstand, I just let it fall down beside my head as I stared up at the ceiling. It’s not that I couldn’t believe that he’d set this all up, because I could (Sergio had done some pretty amazing stunts as long as I’d known him, including rearranging the lockers in order from shortest to tallest, something that David was not amused by), I was just overwhelmed. It’d been a while since I’d seen him, weeks flying into months because my summer in Spain passed way too quickly for me to be satisfied. We’d been talking about how much it sucked, being apart, but in our own way; I would hint at how boring it was here, Sergio would complain that he had nothing to do there. Poor Stevie had to deal with midnight calls and more than a few pouts, he’d probably be happy that the Spaniard was coming to visit.

I got up from the bed, fumbling in the dark room, letting my phone lay on the bed behind me. Speaking of Stevie, he’d given up on watching tv and had gone outside to sit on the balcony a while after Sergio had called. He was probably staring at the stars, something I know he does more than he probably wants me to know. I crept over to the door that he’d left cracked open just barely, letting all of the warmth of our hotel room seep out into the cold night. He was perched in a chair huddled in a hoodie that was almost too big, his head tilted back so he could watch the sky, cell phone up to his right ear. Instead of speaking, though, he was silent and I wondered if it was because he was listening to the person on the other end talk or if he’d just ended a call as well. But he took a breath and let it out, almost like a quiet sigh before he said, “yo quiero para visitar tu, Xabi.” I smirked.


End file.
